Food taking a bigger bite out of our budgets

The following editorial is reprinted from the Aug. 19 Orange County Register.

You may have noticed food prices creeping higher. Officially, the U.S. Consumer Price Index shows inflation at less than 2 percent a year in recent years. But for the past 20 years, the CPI has included only “core CPI,” which excludes prices for energy and food, supposedly because they’re too volatile.

But we still need food and gas. “According to the St. Louis branch of the Federal Reserve, food inflation was 22 percent between January 2006 and June 2013, while core CPI clocked in at only 15 percent ove...